Supplication to the Madonna of Pompei (Feast of the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Rosary)

A prayer that stops at noon

Some festivals are measured in floats or market stalls. The Supplication to the Madonna of Pompei is measured in silence: as the clock strikes 12 noon, on May 8th and the first Sunday of October, thousands of pilgrims gathered in Piazza Bartolo Longo, in front of the Pontifical Shrine, begin to recite the same words together. At that very instant, in dozens of languages, the prayer is repeated in parishes, homes, and hospitals across half the world. It is the event that defines the identity of the Municipality of Pompei, in the Province of Naples, and one of the most attended devotional events in the entire Campania region.

Saint Bartolo Longo and the birth of the Supplication

The Supplication was composed in 1883 by Bartolo Longo, a lawyer from Salento born in Latiano, in the diocese of Oria, who arrived in the Valley of Pompei in 1872 and was canonized by Pope Leo XIV on October 19, 2025. Longo wrote it in response to the encyclical Supremi apostolatus officio, published by Leo XIII on September 1, 1883, which invited Catholics to rediscover the Rosary. The prayer was publicly recited for the first time on October 14, 1883. In 1915, Benedict XV recited it at noon in the Pauline Chapel at the Vatican, inaugurating a tradition that subsequent pontiffs have never interrupted.

Two fixed dates, one single time

• May 8th: anniversary of the laying of the first stone of the Shrine, which took place in 1876.
• First Sunday of October: in the heart of the month traditionally dedicated to the Rosary.
• In both cases, the solemn recitation is set for 12 noon, preceded by the morning Eucharistic concelebration.

The ritual: unveiling of the Painting, vigil, and white night of prayer

The festival does not end in an hour. In the preceding days, the unveiling of the Painting of the Virgin of the Rosary is celebrated, with the traditional rite of kissing the image, accompanied by the Holy Rosary and evening mass. On the eve, a Marian vigil is held, continuing throughout the night until the first light of dawn, culminating in the Midnight Mass presided over by the Archbishop Prelate of Pompei. At dawn, the square is already full: buses of pilgrims arrive from all over Southern Italy and beyond. The celebrations are followed live on television (Tv2000, Canale 21, and, on the most solemn occasions, Rai), which multiplies the number of participants by millions.

2026: The 150th anniversary of the Shrine and Pope Leo XIV

The 2026 edition was extraordinary. On May 8, 2026, exactly 150 years after the laying of the first stone and on the first anniversary of his election, Pope Leo XIV arrived in Pompei as a pilgrim: adoration and blessing of the sick, mass in Piazza Bartolo Longo at 10:30 am, and the Supplication recited by himself at noon, before an immense crowd. In his homily, the Pontiff recalled that «the Hail Mary repeated in the Holy Rosary is an act of love» and relaunched the appeal for peace. The bond between this Pope and Pompei was born precisely on May 8, 2025, the day of the Supplication and the conclave that elected him: in his first words from the Loggia, he cited the Madonna of Pompei.

Pompei, the city of charity

Those who arrive thinking they will only find a shrine discover a city born around a social work. Bartolo Longo and Countess Marianna Farnararo De Fusco founded orphanages, schools, and institutes for the children of prisoners: the Shrine still defines itself today as a «laboratory of solidarity and human promotion». For the people of Pompei, the Supplication is both an act of faith and a civic memory of that history.

Why it is worth attending

For those visiting the archaeological excavations, the New Pompei of the Virgin of the Rosary is just a few minutes' walk away and tells the exact reverse of the buried city: not ruins, but a community built from scratch in one hundred and fifty years. Attending the Supplication means seeing an entire square that, at the same second, stops talking to pray. An experience that strikes even the secular visitor, for its collective intensity more than for the liturgy.